Young Lula: Esteban Torres Remembers

Michael Sedano

The world loves comeback stories like Brazil’s presidential election. The winner in 2022, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in 2003-2010 was president of Brazil. Right-wingers dumped him in the next election and locked him up for two years. The political prisoner was freed by court decree. Lula organized his way back into relevance, ran against his jailers, and Lula wins again. Is there another shoe to drop? A ver.

A few years back, I was interviewing Esteban Torres to write his “as told to” autobiography. One of Torres’ favorite stories of his time as a United Auto Workers organizer in South America, is one where Torres butts heads with a firebrand laborer in Brazil.

Background: When Detroit’s Big Three started making cars in South America, the industry thought to leverage the region’s skilled, cheap, labor to rake in money hand over fist. A UAW-financed campaign sent the only Spanish-speaking organizer Walther Reuther knew, Esteban Torres, to organize the South American auto industry.

It’s an exciting story not only of labor versus management, but Torres and the UAW were in competition with other unions, the Soviets and the CIA get mixed up in the scene, and the State Department has to rescue Torres from repressive government threats.

Torres pulls it off to amazement and career-solidifying acclaim. Here’s Torres’ recollection, in 2020, of that time in Brazil.

“Pocho” is what Mexicans call a Chicano, I knew that already. Despite carrying a nopal en la frente, in Mexico, Chicanos were outsiders. In all Latin America, I am an outsider. Workers won’t give me a free pass into their group’s confidence just for being brown. Quite the opposite. Some thought I was a spy.

Overcoming suspicion often is a matter of how one treats others. In United States culture, Chicanos understand being outsiders or a “Stranger in One's Land,” as Ruben Salazar titled his historic 1968 report. Salazar laid the foundation for thinking critically about our cultura. I hope history remembers that.

We Chicanos don’t have to remain outsiders. My story is about one individual’s growth from outsider to insider, from insider to a top seat. Individuals, despite and in the face of exclusion, find the freedom to attain leadership and authority, to be the First, the Only, among the few.

Growing entire generations to have the same kinds of abilities and freedom as one individual, is our next step. Some people call that “assimilation,” or “accommodation,” but I think it’s adaptability. One individual’s “high tolerance for ambiguity” just means someone is good at being a chameleon. You fit in, you blend in, you disappear, but always remain yourself because no one can take that from you.

When the chameleon sees what it waited for in disguise, in a flash! the chameleon does what good chameleons do, take care of business.

For a Union organizer, every person in the plant presents a unique opportunity to bond, people-to-people, and as workers. The organizer comes into a meeting with a basic message and purpose, but the workers, the audience, determine a successful outcome. Ignite a spark among the worker community and local Organizers leverage that to enroll members and gain bargaining strength.

One of the best experiences of igniting sparks and making personal contact came in Brazil. The training plan scheduled a series of classroom meetings. Time and motion studies were a complicated technology and it didn’t help when one of the students heckled me. “This guy is a CIA plant,” he said. Some of the workers started to sway toward his persuasion. Being from the United States, CIA ties weren’t unlikely, in their experience.

I repeated what I’d always say stressing union to union and worker solidarity, not international movidas serving their own interests, not the worker’s. 

The smart guy listened, that’s what good agitators do. My subject matter was immediately useful. Engineering, time and motion studies, produce hard numbers that prove arguments, like a need to slow down an assembly line. Labor shows Management how improving work conditions gains better productivity, a win-win bargaining stance. The agitator settled back and began to work with me in the classroom discussions.

When the final class came to a close, that heckler had become top student. He came to me and shook my hand and told me I’d won him over and that I was an all-right guy. I will always remember his young face and see it when I see the news about that worker, Lula da Silva, former President of Brazil.

SNAFU: A Night At the Opera

Note: Esteban Torres completes advanced electrical training in preparation for four-year assignment in Europe. A series of military foul-ups sees the youngster re-trained to blowing up old bridges and patrolling the brand-new Iron Curtain. Torres' love of cartooning lands him full-time assignment in elite Bavarian environs. Assigned to Intelligence School in Oberammergau, he draws propaganda manuals, a dream job. He's recruited to infiltrate Romania as a spy but the plan never gets off the ground. Like any soldier, Torres' duty comes with adventures and mishaps. The ex-soldier enjoyed telling how his plans for an elegant night at the Munich Opera's first post-war La Boheme turns into a night in jail.

 

Excerpt from Chapter Three, The Autobiography of Esteban Torres As Told to Michael Sedano

1949, Germany

My big let-down of no job, is a move up to a great job. The first months in my overseas assignment, I work mostly in a comfortable office drawing cartoons for the Army newsletter. 

 

I’m also assigned regular Constabulary duties. That means, for all intents and purposes, I’m la chota.

 

In Böblingen, this teenager fresh out of the East Los barrio struts around decked out in shiny black helmet with two gold stripes, spit-polished boots laced-up to the ankles with bloused trousers and Sam Browne belt. 

 

I am the occupation army’s constabulary with authority over 12,000 mostly good people. I carry a weapon and live rounds. Locals call me das Blitz-Politzei after the lightning bolt on our shoulder patch.

 

I’m approaching my twentieth birthday. Back in the United States I still can’t vote and in California, can’t go buy a drink in a civilian bar. I can’t live in Montebello--because I’m Mexican--no matter how old I am. No Chicanos need apply.

 

Joining the military straight out of high school might not be for everyone. You aren’t everyone. Neither am I. Enlisting in the Army was my choice in 1949. I would not do anything differently today. 

 

== 1951 == Torres is now a Staff Sergeant 

 

The boy who left L.A. is a man now. Other men follow his orders. The man from East Los disciplines as needed, keeps matters in the platoon, no need to go up the chain of command. Under my leadership, my men fit together, my men become a team, efficient, effective, in control of the mission. Nothing can shake our confidence.

 

I had to laugh when I thought about my confidence once I’d been in Germany long enough to know my way around. I thought I was unstoppable, except I stopped myself.

 

Not looking back has been a good way for me to keep my eyes on what’s headed my way. That Boy Scout motto, Be Prepared, has lifelong value. In fact, the one time I left myself unprepared it cost me dearly.

 

One of the streets in town was a tailor’s row. Imported yardage had found its way into the economy and the tailors stocked a lot of green wool material, perfect for a young GI with a sense of style to have a custom-made Class “A” uniform made to his specifications.

 

Vanity can be a good thing, when you’re young and do elaborate things that put you into the cultural swirl of things, like the Munich Opera. 

 

My grandmother played opera records on Sunday mornings while I lay on the floor reading the funny papers in the Examiner and La Opinion. I laughed at the Katzenjammer Kids while German opera played in the background. Then came the war against Germany and the Katzenjammer kids, and German opera, sounded different. 

 

After the war, German music came back to life, and although the Opera House had been bombed out, the Munich Opera was doing La Boheme on a rebuilt stage.

 

I planned the event of a lifetime. A fabulous dinner, the opera in my custom-made Class A United States Army uniform. My brass would shine and reflect candelabra lights as I strode up the stairs into the hall. The center of attention.

 

I never made it.

 

I checked into a first-class hotel to get myself ready for my big cultural night. A hot shower, fresh shave, ribbons and brass in place. My “bespoke” custom-made uniform made me look like a diamond.

 

I had just tied my spit-shined dress shoes when a firm knock focused my attention on the unlocked door. It opened and two MPs walked into my room like they paid the rent. I recognized their pugnacity from my days as a Constabulary patrol.

 

“Where’s your pass, Soldier?”

 

Pass. 

 

A detail I’d neglected, I wasn’t prepared. 

 

These MPs weren’t boy scouts and sure were not going to do a good turn daily, let me go to La Boheme, my plans went up in smoke. 

 

The MPs did their duty. I was escorted to jail and that’s where I spent my night at the Opera, all dressed up fancy in my tailor-made Class A uniform, locked up with the drunken GIs. I definitely was the most turned-out jailbird in Germany that night.

 

I had the Pass. My Commander approved my leave, the Company Clerk typed up the Pass and handed it to me. I put the Pass in my fatigue jacket pocket and left it there. My jacket and pass were waiting for me when I reported to the Captain. He laughed.

 

Leadership looks like a laughing man behind a desk and a relieved man on the other side of the desk. The Commander figured my punishment was the cost of the ticket to La Boheme, the price of the hotel room, and the taste of stale bread sandwiches instead of Sauerbraten, Rotkohl, Kartoffelkloesse, and all the trimmings of a fancy German banquet on an enlisted man's pay.

 

In Memoriam: Esteban Torres QEPD. Memories of C/S Veteranas Veteranos

 

Becoming C/S: Veteranos/Veteranas Remember

Chicano Literature is one United States literature with an actual known start date, 1969, when Berkeley California's  Quinto Sol Press edited El Espejo The Mirror Selected Mexican American Literature and re-titled it Chicano. 

A bit more ambiguous is the start date of Chicano Studies. It was around the time El Espejo was being revised from a "mexican american" anthology when scholarly ferment brewed in California, and Colorado, and Texas,  and other places. Graduate students were multiplying in numbers across higher education. They were originating an intellectual critical mass mirroring, in education, el movimiento in social justice. Both would eventuate in departments and degrees, jobs, hasta PhDs and ABDs, in C/S.

Some of the O.Gs.--Originator Graduate students--now gowned and academically ensconced, took time in early December 2021 to gather, reminisce, study, do a full-out Mental Menudo-like tertullia. 

In a series of video documentaries available at Latinopia.com, these raza scholars reflect on C/S, in the academy and on the streets, over the past fifty years of the discipline. The Reunion de Colegas scholars also felt it important to highlight the role of spirituality in the Chicano civil rights movement, and to reflect on lives and contributions of colleagues who have passed on in recent years.

Today, as La Bloga acknowledges the passing of Esteban Torres, it's appropriate to share remembrances of other Chicana and Chicano heroes and stories of the Elders of C/S.

 

Latinopia's Visual History of Reunion de Colegas C/S: Chicana Chicano Scholars

 http://latinopia.com/latino-cinematv/latinopia-showcase-reunion-de-colegas-encuentro/ 

 AND 

 http://latinopia.com/latino-history/latinopia-showcase-50-years-of-struggle-part-one/ 

 AND 

 http://latinopia.com/latino-cinematv/latinopia-showcase-50-years-of-struggle-part-two/ 

 AND 

 http://latinopia.com/latino-cinematv/latinopia-showcase-50-years-of-struggle-part-three/ 

 AND

 http://latinopia.com/latino-history/latinopia-showcase-reunion-de-colegas-remembrances/

QEPD Esteban Torres

Michael Sedano

Until the GOPlague shut us down, Esteban Torres and Michael Sedano met weekly for the better part of two years. The two-part project would tell a YA audience about Torres' youth and young adulthood, leading up to the Chicano Moratorium in 1970. Part two, for a general audience, would focus on Torres' political career from U.S. Ambassador and the Carter White House, and then his career as an environmental congressman.

The day Sedano and Torres first met to see if they could work together, Torres introduced himself via a pivotal incident from fifth grade. This introduction became the natural opening chapter for his story.

EXCERPT from Chapter One, “The Worst Day of My Life.” Autobiography of Esteban Torres As Told to Michael Sedano.

 

The day that changed my life forever started like every other school day. Mama heading for work and Grandma in the kitchen. Across the street, earliest daylight reflects off the white walls of my elementary school, making my mother a silhouette as she heads to the bus that takes her to work. 

 

I can smell Gramma’s avena. She makes avena with canela sticks, canned milk, raisins, and chunks of piloncillo. She probably has buttered toast to dunk. Rise and shine! What a perfect way to begin another day of Fifth Grade.

 

Jaime, la Licha, Fudu, and I take turns at tetherball until the bell rings and we race into Mrs. Osborne’s classroom and take our seats. I’m in Row 2 behind Licha.

 

“EDWARD,” Mrs. Osborne announces. 

 

The teacher has my attention just in how Mrs. Osborne says my name. Someone whispers, “uu.” Her teacher voice has an edge in it.

 

“Come to the front of the room, Edward.”

 

How would I know the teacher means to assassinate my character in front of my fellow fifth graders? What could I do if I knew?

 

This is one of those times that you live through once, then for the rest of your life, in school, at work, at social events, every time someone announces your name for no reason at all, you’re that little kid again, standing up in front of the room helpless, being wrongfully accused, everything a whirlwind.

 

Mrs. Osborne calls me a traitor, a traitor to the school, to my classmates, to myself. Over the weekend, Mrs. Osborne tells the class, someone destroyed the school’s Victory Garden, stole the fruit. The teacher tells the class “Edward was part of it.”

 

What can a fifth grader do? I stand there humiliated, tears running down my face. Mrs. Osborne is the teacher, she has absolute authority in her classroom, and anywhere on school grounds. 

 

So she’s right. 

 

In the eyes of my classmates staring at me standing there, on display alone at the front of the room, I am a traitor to the Victory Garden. I am worthless.

 

My friends look away when I look to them for support. Jenny Amador sticks her tongue out at me. Even Akiko frowns, looks away. Louie is laughing silently, pointing at me. For once, he’s not the one in trouble.  

 

Look at those eyes looking back at me. Friends, que no? We played together this morning before the bell. I thought they know me better than to be looking at me with disgust. No one’s jumping up and saying “No, he’s not! Eddie’s not a traitor!” 

 

I am on my own. What can I do but cry out of absolute powerlessness? I cry in front of the whole room standing there. A traitor.

 

You can imagine, after being called a Victory Garden destroyer, that was a crummy day of school. You can disappear in a crowd and I did.

 

As soon as the last bell rang, I ran across the street. Usually, I get a quesadilla and a glass of water so when I just head for my room my mom asks what’s wrong? 

 

My mom taught me not to interrupt others because it’s rude, and besides, “get all the facts.” She reminds me not to open my mouth unless I have all the information and a plan. So I know how upset mom is when I no sooner say Mrs. Osborne called me a vandal and a traitor in front of the whole class, than mom interrupts.

 

“She said what?”

 

I didn’t have to start again because I know Mom heard me, so I kept going. How Mrs. Osborne called me up to the front of the room. Pointed at me. Told the class what I did. That I destroyed the school Victory Garden and stole all the food intended for the community. 

 

My tears tell my mother how helpless I still feel. Powerlessness has to be the worst emotion in the world, but my mother has a stronger power.

 

"You tell Mrs. Osborne that I work hard for this family. I put food on the table. You have all the food that you need to eat, and you don't have to go steal food from school to eat.” 

 

“You know that we don't allow you to do that, and you wouldn't do it. You tell her to apologize to you.”

 

Both of us took a breath. I was thinking hard and my mother had already thought it through.

 

“And if she doesn't apologize to you, you tell her that I'm going to come over to school and I'm going to beat the hell out of her." 

 

It’s funny looking back on it because my mother would have done it. I didn’t want to be the fifth grader whose mother beat the hell out of the teacher.

 

Here is my life’s most crucial moment and I don’t realize what’s going on because I’m a scared eleven-year-old boy who doesn’t want his mom charging into the classroom and shaking Mrs. Osborne around like a Cantinflas puppet. 

 

What’s happening is I’m taking a giant step into manhood, guided by my wise Latina mother. My mother says to take responsibility for the outcome by speaking for myself. 

 

Speaking up for yourself is the main part of what I learned to do. There’s more to it, I learned.

 

Ask for help when you need help, give help when you can. Don’t expect thanks. Mom didn’t tell me that last part, it’s what I learned as an adult, in organizing and politics. Do a thing because it’s right. You don’t equivocate, go maybe yes, maybe no.

 

Above all, stand up for yourself.

 

Today I look back on my life and career in community service filled with Firsts and unique jobs: the First Chicano with a White House position; the First Chicano to organize South American auto workers; the First Chicano UNESCO Ambassador. I was one of only three California Mexican Americans in Congress, Ed Roybal, Marty Martinez, Esteban Torres. I was the only Chicano.

 

A reporter asked me one day, “Congressman, did you ever feel amazed to be this Chicano from East Los Angeles sitting in Paris as the United States representative to UNESCO?” 

 

And the answer is "No". Not amazed. I think you’d be “amazed” if your results surprised you. I wasn’t surprised to be the First, or Only, Chicano in so many places in my life. 

We belong. Punto. I happened to be the one. 

 

It doesn’t matter that you’re The Only or The First, your foremost responsibility is to yourself. People will draw their own conclusions about you, about your raza, about your familia. Be effective and their opinions don’t matter.

 

 

Chapter Two: The Best Day of My Life: Same Day

 

The day after Mrs. Osborne assassinated my character in front of the whole world, I lay awake reliving my humiliation. Mom kissed me goodbye and didn’t say anything even though she knew I was awake. Gramma made avena but I just picked at the raisins.

 

I waited for the second bell then walked across the street to Rowan Avenue School. Mrs. Blanco in the office gave me a dirty look when I crossed the patio. 

 

I walked down the hall past the third grade rooms. They had a new teacher, a man, in Mrs. McCartney’s room. The fourth grade wall had a map with little flags and strings leading to the countries kids came from. Everyone here came from somewhere else.

 

You know that song, “we’re all in our places with bright shiny faces?” Well, my classmates were already seated, including Mrs. Osborne. Except they weren’t being all shiny. Everyone was giving me dirty looks, including Mrs. Osborne. 

 

But la Licha was looking away. She told Gilbert Manzano she likes me, now she doesn’t look at me. I am alone. As Mama says, no one else is going to do it, so it is time to stand up for myself.

 

When you’re scared, I learned much later giving speeches, no one knows your stomach is jumping and your knees are wobbling. Butterflies are flying into my throat as I walk up to Mrs. Osborne’s desk. I hope I will get through what I planned, lying there in the dark.

 

Teacher desks at Rowan Avenue Elementary School have a white line on the floor you’re not supposed to cross. I crossed it and my stomach touched the hard wooden edge of the desk. I don’t want the other kids to hear, but I don’t want to whisper. I aim to do as my mother says.

 

Licha and them have stopped messing around and the whole front row is watching me. Mrs. Osborne watches me, starts to say something when I step past the line, but she waits for me to speak first. I think of what my mother told me.

 

“Just walk right up to her and tell her,” Mama says, “speak up.” 

 

I take a breath, hold it, let air run slowly out my nostrils so all I feel is the warm soft. All eyes are on me.

 

The only difficult part of speaking up comes just before you talk. Then you do it. Your muscles force the air up your dry throat as your lips begin to form a string of sounds you’ve already thought through. You open your mouth, the first words come out, and you’re committed.

 

“Mrs. Osborne, I have something to say.” 

 

I had mentally rehearsed the opening words walking down the hall. They came out like practice. 

 

I made the sentence come out like a statement, word for word, a little emphasis on “say.” Inside I was wary at how Mrs. Osborne would respond. I couldn’t read her face when she said to go on, what did I have to say?

 

I heard my mother’s voice telling me what to tell Mrs. Osborne and I used Mama's words, almost just like Mama expressed.

 

“I told my mother what you did yesterday. How you made me stand in front of everyone. How you said I stole the Victory Garden and was a traitor.”

 

I struggled not to cry again. I loved the Victory Garden. I was American, I supported the war effort, I wouldn’t do anything to hurt my country.

 

Mrs. Osborne looked at me over her glasses, she was biting her upper lip. I continued.

 

“My mother got mad that you would say that. She says to tell you she works to put food on the table and she makes sure I get fed. I don’t need to steal food.” 

I would never do that, I added personally. I was mad and that just came out.

 

I am almost out of breath. No one talks to white people like this, especially a teacher. I inhale and finish saying what I planned to say.

 

“My mother says you need to apologize to me. She says if you don’t apologize she’s going to come here to school.”

 

I didn’t elaborate on what would happen after Mama got here. Mrs. Osborne didn’t ask. 

 

“Wait a minute,” she told me.

 

“Class,” Mrs. Osborne called. 

 

It wasn’t like yesterday when she called my name, but it was out of the blue. The kids who weren’t entremetidos already eavesdropping me and the teacher, looked up.

 

“Edward's here. You know what I told you about him yesterday? Well, I want to apologize to him. He didn't do that.” 

 

“He really wasn't responsible, and he didn't do that." 

 

That was my first First, in a life of them. I was the First Chicano at Rowan Avenue School to be wrongfully accused and vindicated in a public apology. For all anyone knows, that was the First Time in United States history. 

 

That doesn’t matter. I was innocent, one of the good kids again. 

 

Ever since that day, I've never been afraid to stand up for my rights. When you stand up for yourself, you’re standing up for somebody else's rights, too, because even if you’re the first, you will not be the only one who needs to confront injustice.

 

I learned to be eager to speak up, ready to talk matters out, whether negotiate in a conversation at a fancy restaurant or argue across the bargaining table. 

 

Talk changes situations. Talk produces mutual understanding. Big stakes or local, having vocal advocates who speak up for equity and justice is a key to winning.

 

I have no idea how long my playground fame lasted at Rowan Avenue. When you’re in fifth grade so many new things are happening to your body and your mind that last week’s highlights flow away into good feelings and you concentrate on the moment.

 

DDLM: FXA Reads. From a WIP: Unionizing Argentina

Francisco X. Alarcón is a good friend of La Bloga who has walked on. Adelante, Francisco! Here is our friend reading a pair of works outside Doheny Library the first day of the Festival de Flor y Canto: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. One never knows what tommorow has in store, verdad?


Latinopia Word Alarcon Two Poems from Latinopia.com on Vimeo.


Union Solidarity: A Value in Action
Michael Sedano

Esteban Torres represented eastern Los Angeles county in the House of Representatives for eight terms, earning a reputation as a fierce environmentalist when he led a campaign to clean up the BKK toxic landfill in Covina. A Graduate of Garfield High School, Torres entered public life as a Union organizer in the Chrysler Maywood plant. He became the first Chicano Shop Steward then Torres joined the national UAW, who "lent" him to the International Metalworkers Federation because, being a Chicano, he was the only UAW executive qualified to take the risk of organizing the entire continent.

Michael Sedano is wrapping the final chapters of a YA "as told to" autobiography of Congressman Torres. With Labor Unions under severe stress from conservative politicians, La Bloga shares this anecdote from a key moment in Torres' career and labor history.

Background: US and European automotive manufacturers found skilled workers for cheap in South America. Walter and Victor Reuther of the United Auto Workers spearheaded an initiative to train South American unions in U.S.-style bargaining and negotiations, ergonomic practices for worker health, and history of the labor movement. Torres got the assignment. In an essentially one-man organizing effort, Esteban Torres Unionized the South American metal trades. Workers won harmonized wages, improved working conditions, unique benefits. Unionization helped countless familias find home and security.


The Argentina part of my South America Organizing mission ended in a major accomplishment with Unión Obrera Metalurjíca affiliating with the International Metal Workers Federation. Workers of the world were uniting. They would bring the automakers to the bargaining table.

But it all almost blew up in my face during what should have been a regular automotive plant visit. I was viewed as an outside influence when the local workers already had sophisticated organization.

Management’s worst fears grew from UAW historical tactics. In the 1930s, sit-in strikes and worker solidarity won important concession from the bosses. I did not represent the UAW, a United States union, I came as a representative of the International, and my goals were educational. They had my agenda in advance.

Outside the meeting room, the workers on the assembly line were not part of my intentions. They called a "wildcat" strike. The workers stopped the line and sat down. It was a sti-down strike and as a Union man in the plant, I was sitting-in, too.

Like in the U.S., the Argentine assembly line stretches half a mile under a steel-skinned canopy. Steel beams and sheet metal enter at one end, a car exits at the other. In between, workers perform their tasks on parts that cruise past hanging from an overhead chain or pulled along hooked to a concealed tractor. Every worker follows a plan, minimizing steps but performing the same motions over and over, controlling the moving target, side-stepping to keep up with line speed, finishing the job then  turning to meet the relentlessly oncoming next partial assembly.

At a designated time, workers push the closest STOP button and the line grinds to a halt. Hanging pieces of work-in-progress rock back and forth on their hooks and slowly come to a halt. Partially-formed auto bodies sit emptily where someone was making it into a Ford.

Workers arrived prepared. For three days and two nights they remain at their workstation, eating, chatting, singing songs to bolster their conviction. At night workers spread their jackets and cardboard in the backseat frames of cars on the line.

Had I lied, entered the plant under a false flag to instigate this costly defiance?

Management negotiated a suitable conclusion to the labor action with the striking workers. I was under a microscope and closely questioned by my hosts, but in the end they knew I was on-site when workers engaged a long-planned action.

Although I represented the International federation, the U.S. State Department represented my interests. The local U.S. labor attaché demanded a full account of my role. As it turned out, Argentina's Ford workers didn’t need a UAW lesson on historical sit-downs to recognize a useful tactic to get Management to sit-down and talk. I just happened to be there at the right time when workers seized the means of production--their labor--and withheld it. I had the good fortune to be there and demonstrate solidarity. 

Solidarity is a Value of the Union Movement. You hear a lot about Values. A Value is a behavior someone can witness. A Value isn’t merely an attitude, which is a predisposition to act one way rather than another. Values express themselves in actions. Values produce behaviors others can hear, see, touch, count, and define your motive, what you stand for.

That sit-in would be only the first way I'd get to demonstrate U.S. and International solidarity with Argentina's metalworkers. My host, Augusto Vandor told me, “We are so proud that you’re here representing the United States auto workers, that you’re representing the IMF, because we like those organizations, and we want you to be with us on March the first, where we’re going to celebrate our Plan de Lucha.”

I did not know el Plan de Lucha, but clearly I was offered an honor. I did some research. Plan de Lucha, I learned, was a massing of Labor followed by a march to the Capitol. As an honored visitor, I would march in the front rank with the banner carriers and Union leadership. Una manifestación por la calle principal, thousands of us. I had visions of a happy, festive Labor Day march down Whittier Boulevard, gritos and mariachi supplanted with Argentine touches.

After an evening of fellowship and a few beers to conclude my research, I took a taxi to my hotel. When the cab turned on the main avenida toward my hotel I remarked to the driver I’d be marching this street in tomorrow’s Plan de Lucha. He laughed heartily.

“Every year,” the cab driver told me, “Labor holds that manifestación on March the First. And every year, the Army greets them with clubs and bullets. The marchers in the front rows get beaten and dragged into vans. They're jailed, some are killed, and every year, every year, they come back and do it again.”

I was still thinking about what the cab driver said, the next morning as I laced on my steel-toed work shoes. The heavy leather soles offered the kind of support my feet needed for a long walk, or a darting run from a police riot.

Sure enough, up the avenida we march, a huge excited mass. And sure enough, the Army is at the steps of the Capitol to greet us, seething with anger separated from us by wooden barricades. 

This year, the Union assembled without attacks. The country was changing, the Union was gaining influence behind a united front. Solidarity is a Value in action.

From a work in progress...Birth of the First Child

Michael Sedano

The left arm is back after two months pinned to my side. A "separated shoulder" stopped me cold just as I neared the end of a big project I began back in July. It was incredibly frustrating.

Today, as I'm getting back to speed, I'll share what I was doing until I fell head over heels and tasted cement.

Over the summer of 2018 I had the pleasure of meeting regularly with Esteban Torres with the goal of writing an As-Told-To YA autobiography. My goal was to finish it in January. Last month.

When I went looking for autobiographies for raza boys I found Cesar Chavez and a raft of athletes. Torres and I weren't looking to portray heroism or great moments like striking out the side in the ninth inning of some baseball game. That's not what I want to write. And Torres' story demands telling (such as when he got Chavez together with the Mexican worker federations).

Autobiography, literature generally, creates a rhetorical process--Identification. Learn by reading, or "Literature as equipment for living," Kenneth Burke wrote, saying that literature should "size up a situation" for a reader so everyday life comes easier, and all those  situations and decisions add up to big things on purpose.

Esteban Torres' career makes it difficult to avoid being awestruck at "the first" or "the only" status. The vato graduated from Garfield, goes straight into the Army and finds himself patrolling the Iron Curtain. He comes home, falls in love, joins the UFW in the middle of the Red Scare.

The Chicano gets elected Shop Steward at the Chrysler Plant in Maywood. Next, Walter Reuther sends Torres to organize South America when Detroit starts building cars there. Torres organizes South America.

Then Torres goes public sector. Esteban Torres becomes the United States Ambassador to UNESCO and moves his familia to Paris. Jimmy Carter brings Torres back from Europe to work in the White House. 

Out of a job with Reagan's win, Torres comes home. He closes down the toxic BKK landfill in Covina and rides that to Congress. Backtrack to the movimiento years; Torres and the Union start LULAC. Torres fails to incorporate the City of East Los Angeles. By the way, the police riot during the Chicano Moratorium interrupted a permitted event. Torres is the one who paid the fees and signed for the permit.

A Chicano does all this, from Garfield High School to walking with Jimmy Carter in the Rose Gardeen to sitting down to talk with Nelson Mandela, puro wow. Torres sat as Speaker Pro Tem of the House of Representatives, third in line to replace a vacant executive.

Some young man carbuncular assigned to read an autobiography in tenth grade English needs to know about this life. Not because Esteban Torres had all those salaried titles when no one else did, but because Chicanos and Chicanas from East Los belong in those roles. 

Being the First is an index of delay and systemic shortcoming, not a beneficence bestowed upon a First or Only tipo tipa. This storyteller's endeavor is not to pound a kid over the head with this.  Exposing Torres' magnificent attainments as those of a commoner is the point, for the Firsts and the Onlies of the world. 

Interestingly enough, so many Firsts and Onlies in the world confess to a notion of "imposter syndrome." For any reader, Torres' biography informs an affirming perception of belonging and being qualified for challenges.

And the point of all this for a YA reader, for a boy in his adolescence especially? I ponder, what did I need to read when I was a kid that woulda been my Burkean literature as equipment for living? Torres and I talk our way toward those questions. A great life like the one being lived by Esteban Torres is made up of everyday experiences every boy goes through, will live through, will size up and make choices.

Esteban and I, we converse. I'm an inveterate talker but restrain myself. So is he.

Esteban recounts events and I listen. We focus on beginnings--early "firsts" because everyone has firsts, many of them a kid doesn't notice, doesn't put them together right away. Torres' career has so much adult significance but I focus upon his experiences nearer those of his YA reader. Here, for example, is Esteban Torres' reflection on a man's first pregnancy and birth.

Torres has been attending Art Center on the GI Bill and is heading to Madison Avenue to jump feet-first into the dog-eat-dog advertising game. His fiancée talks sense to him

Instead of a walk-up cold water New York flat, Arcy and I found a rental behind a larger house in East L.A. It was to be the first of many addresses with a half in it, like 1243 ½ Ford Street, until we could buy our first house to raise our family.

When I hear a man say, “My wife is pregnant,” I want to correct the attitude behind the statement. No matter how much help your wife receives from her mother and sisters, a wife cannot go through the pregnancy without the constant involvement of her husband. “We are pregnant” is the only accurate statement.

We read a popular book on babies written by Dr. Spock. Today, as soon as they learn they’re pregnant, couples read a book like The First 12 Months of Life, and because Dr. Spock’s book is still in print, many parents read both. 

All responsible parents-to-be should read-up on what to expect during pregnancy. It’s not just the mother and the baby, there are new demands and expectations in store for the father-to-be. Gathering as much information as a man can, makes him well prepared to be a good father.

All around, people offer advice and consejos and myth and emotion. Reading offers the author’s cool, observer’s voice. That voice of fact can buffer the intensity of a wife’s experience, the husband’s responses. Day by day, a pregnant couple bears it together, but each in their separate ways.

In the morning, I go off to Chrysler for ten hours absence, surrounded by co-workers. Arcy has those ten hours alone, until she has someone to talk to.

But of course, she can only distill her nine hours into a few minutes. Words, nor tears, just don’t do enough to fill the empty hours. I’d come in the door, and no matter the soot covering me from the grimiest day in the pit, Arcy needed me, I needed Arcy, we needed each other’s abrazos.

Thankfully, Dr. Spock prepares a family for some of these trials. You live the parts the book leaves out, and you're on your own. Then things happen and it's like it says in the book. Like ganas. The book tells about how a mother’s body drives the need for ingredients in strange food combinations like ice cream and pickles. Try patas en vinagre and a pink concha. Fortunately, the panaderia is next door to the carniceria, and they’re a short walk from the house.

How will you know when it’s time? The book and our doctor told us in detail, because “when the water breaks” doesn’t mean a lot if you’ve never experienced the onset of labor. My mother and grandmother reassured us, “you’ll know and if you can’t tell, Arcy will.”

I put fifty cents worth of Ethyl in the tank the day before, so I was ready when Arcy told me to warm up the Dodge. I took a deep breath and helped Arcy into the back seat where she could stretch out and get comfortable. Her labor pains had not begun.

I’d planned the route, Arcy and I had driven it. Just like practice. I drove straight out Sixth to Alameda, up to College, turned left. I exhaled with relief when French Hospital came into view. I drove around back to the Maternity entrance. Nurses wheeled Arcy into the hospital and I found a seat with a couple of other guys and that was it for us fathers. Sit around and wait.

I stood outside the newborn nursery at the window separating me from Carmen Torres. Nowadays, the dad can be right there helping with delivery, the mom and baby not surrounded by strangers.

The nurse brought Carmen to the window. My daughter is red-faced and her skin all splotchy. Sleek black hair peeks out from the knit cap. Her little eyebrows are dainty like her mother’s. I am in love in an entirely new sense of that word, love. My body feels like it's swelling up and bursting with something I know even though I've never felt like this before.

Staring into that baby’s shiny black pupils an enormous weight settles on my shoulder and I accept it eagerly. “For the rest of your life, baby girl, I will take care of you,” I say to myself. And thinking it, saying the words to myself, that “enormous weight” evaporates. I understand with perfect clarity in that moment. My responsibilities to this little girl and her mother are no burden.

Being a father offers me the challenge of my lifetime, one every father can take on himself, whatever his means and ability. It’s the challenge I see for myself in this tiny girl’s curling fingers, of providing a home, nurturing her, and making the world a better place.